


Pulled Under

by Springmagpies



Series: AU August 2020 [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Fluff, Forbidden Love, Pirates, mermaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25715806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springmagpies/pseuds/Springmagpies
Summary: One of the first things a captain teaches his crew is not to talk to mermaids. However, when ship carpenter Leo Fitz meets one while repairing the ship, he can't help but disobey the rule. For he has never met someone as interesting at the mermaid Bobbi Morse.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Bobbi Morse
Series: AU August 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862158
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10
Collections: AOS AU August 2020





	Pulled Under

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the lovely Zuza! (@2minutes2midnight on Tumblr!) Thank you so much for the prompt! Enjoy!

Somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, sailed a small but sturdy ship. As it’s mast reached up to the pink-tinted clouds and its sails puffed up against the salty breeze, the ship cut through the water like a hot knife through butter and its workers went on with their duties. All of them kept to their tasks, moving about the pirate’s ship with practiced pace, their sunburned skin cooling as night overtook day. All of them, but one. 

The young man that stood looking over the edge of the ship often liked to watch the ocean at sunset. As he was a valued member of the crew, who always worked hard and rarely ever complained, the man was allowed this one moment of solitude upon the ship at the end of each day. One would think that life at sea meant always looking out at the vast expanse of water, but truly more time was spent focusing on daily tasks. For no matter the beauty that man finds himself surrounded in, he often forgets to appreciate it. Leopold Fitz, prized carpenter of the ship  _ The Zephyr _ , tried to combat this bit of human nature, deciding with great persistence to appreciate the ocean when given his time of peace. He would try and take a moment each day to watch the sun dip into the water as the golden and pinky hues of dusk burned out their last flames before fading to night. 

Since it was his custom, no one questioned him as he leaned just a bit further over the edge each day. No one questioned it when he appeared to be talking to himself or perhaps to the waves below. No one truly noticed. Not until that fateful day when they heard the splash. 

“Fitz has gone overboard!” one of the crew members shouted across the deck. 

“Someone get the Captain!” another cried.

“Someone get a bloody rope!”

“Silence,” came the voice of the Captain, famed pirate Philip J. Coulson. The crew stopped moving and all stared ahead to their leader. “Flint,” he called, and the handsome young lad closest to the edge of the starboard side stood up straighter. 

“Yes, Captain?”

“Check over the edge will you please.”

Flint quickly rushed to the side of the boat and stuck his head to stare out at the waves below him. Now, the lad was young with a quick mind and keen eyes to boot, so it didn’t take him long to spot just what the Captain must have been looking for.

“There’s something swimming next to the ship,” Flint called, his gaze still lingering over the side of the boat. He thought he could see a tale briefly flip above the water before sinking to the depths below.

“I thought there must be,” the Captain said. 

“Are we going to jump after him?” another crew member asked. 

“No, Hunter, I don’t think he’d want us to,” the Captain replied.

And he was right, for in that dive Fitz had taken a leap of faith. He had broken the binds of forbidden love and handed himself wholly over to the sea he had cared for so deeply. 

The reasoning for his jump was simple. Unbeknownst to the crew, Fitz had made an unlikely acquaintance with someone they had been forbidden to speak to. And the story behind said meeting went as follows: 

It had been a dark evening, stars twinkling in the sky overhead and candlelight guiding Fitz in his work.  _ The Zephyr _ and its crew were docked upon the shores of one of the main islands after they had scraped their hull against an old ship wreck. Once docked, the carpenter had been left to check the damage and fix any potential problems in the ship. It was as he worked that he noticed something glimmering just where the sand dropped off and deep waters took its place. If Fitz wasn’t mistaken, he thought he had seen a pair of eyes. 

At first he thought it had been a vision caused by sleep deprivation in candlelight. But, moments later, he saw it again. This time however, he saw a whole face sticking above the surface of the water. 

“Hello?” he called nervously into the darkness, “is someone there?”

There was the sound of the sea being disrupted and then a loud splash as a tail appeared above the water along with the face.

Fitz paled, falling backwards into the wet sand and sending a tool or two into the ocean. 

The figure smiled as she moved her blonde hair from off her face. 

“You’re a mermaid,” Fitz spluttered.

“Yes,” she said, swimming a bit closer. “Though I like to be called Bobbi.”

“I’m Fitz,” he replied, blinking quickly to pull himself back to reality. He wasn’t supposed to talk to mermaids. They had the reputation of luring sailors like himself in with their melodies before promptly drowning them. However, as he looked into the kind face before him, he didn’t feel as though that were Bobbi’s intentions. 

“What are you doing here?” Fitz asked, his voice growing quieter as he regained his wits. 

“I was curious as to how you were fixing that ship,” Bobbi admitted, though she didn’t seem the least bit bashful. There must have been rules surrounding her talking to him, but if there were she didn’t appear to mind breaking them. 

“Oh, umm, it’s only a minor repair.”

“Can you show me?” 

Fitz looked at the mermaid carefully and, finding no danger in her kind eyes, agreed to her request. 

It was from there that they began to talk. They talked until the sky grew that light lavender shade of morning and they talked the next night as well, Fitz finding the mermaid awaiting his company just off the shore. As they talked, Fitz realized he could listen to Bobbi talk forever if she let him. 

Even after the ship uprooted the anchor and started back to sea, she followed, for traveling the ocean did not seem a large price to pay to continue such interesting conversations. Especially when these conversations led to love. For fall in love they did, in those twilight nights that smelled of sea salt and sounded like breathing waves. 

One particular night, Bobbi was rather daring in her wait for Fitz. She was careful, as she was quite skilled in camouflage, but she still sang for him in her excitement. For that morning she had been informed by a sea witch of a way to allow her and Fitz to be together, if he agreed of course. In the depths of the deepest ocean was a stone that, when wished upon, would grant the desires of one whose love was pure and true. 

“We could be together” Fitz said, when Bobbi told him about her discovery. “I could go with you.”

“Or perhaps I with you,” Bobbi replied, pulling herself a little higher out of the water. 

“As long as we’re together, I truly don’t mind.”

Bobbi smiled. “I feel much the same.”

And so that next day, Bobbi went searching for the stone. It took her three days to find it, even with the sea witch on her side--she was grateful in those moments she had never wronged Raina in anyway. Fitz had just started to become fearful of Bobbi’s fate when she finally swam up to the boat that fateful day. 

“Bobbi,” Fitz whispered, for the crew were not far away.

In response to his greeting, Bobbi lifted the stone from out of the water and grinned. Fueled by excitement and love, Fitz wasn’t quite thinking when he looked over his shoulder twice, took a deep breath, and jumped into the ocean.

Bobbi was about to call out, but Fitz simply laughed before ducking under the water to hide from the crew. Bobbi followed suit and began to laugh as well. Nearly forgetting the stone entirely, she swam towards the pirate, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him soundly.

“I love you,” he said when they parted.

“And I love you,” she replied. Then her eyes widened as she realized they were communicating clearly underwater. 

The magic had worked, for the love between the mermaid and the pirate was true. So true, in fact, that it had granted their wish from both angles. When wishing to be on land, their tails would change to feet and their lungs fill up with air, and when wishing to be in water, their tails returned and they could swim as deep as they liked. For true love, like that between the lovers in this story, is the purest magic there is. 


End file.
